Saturday, November 25, 2017

Fox weirds verbing

Was the morning's lead story at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network -- "Trump lower booms on GOP Senate" -- just a glitch? After all, it was fixed ("Trump lowers boom") within half an hour or so. But before jumping to conclusions, consider this:

"Man open fires" was from the early stages of the Texas church massacre, and it too was replaced before long. But with two of them in three weeks, you have to wonder if something's gotten into the water cooler at Fox. Are we going to regularize all these idiomatic verb phrases by moving the inflection to the noun? Can we bring back Tribune spelling, too?We can't let this one go without a look at the level of booms-lowering in the tax story (which might help explain why it's fallen completely off the homepage as of this writing; hate it when that happens to a lead story). The inside hed (and the link) are fall-off-the-bone milquetoast: "Trump to visit GOP Senate in push to deliver tax 'Christmas present' to Americans." But it appropriately reflects the high drama of the lede:

President Trump is meeting next week with Republican senators in a push
to get a congressional tax reform bill on his desk by Christmas, with a
final vote purportedly coming as early as Thursday.

Surely there's some Trumpian elbow-throwing, though?Trump is eager to pass major tax reform -- the first in nearly three decades -- to get his first major legislative victory.

"We're going to give the American people a huge tax cut
for Christmas,” Trump said last week. “Hopefully, that will be a great,
big, beautiful Christmas present."

Amer. slang. to lower the boom on: to inflict severe damage or harsh punishment on; to treat severely; (also) to put a stop to (an activity). Also to lower the boom: to deal a decisive or destructive blow.